I’m sure this topic has been discussed before, but now that the subject of unfair snubs has been brought to the table again- What exactly did this movie do wrong to fail being cited for Best Picture (and director) for that matter?

1. Biggest box-office hit of the year, and a critical success.2. Heath Ledger’s masterful performance that would later win the Oscar3. 8 nominations- the most ever for a superhero genre film.

How close was it to being a finalist do we think? Assuming The Reader bumped it off, What could be some of the negatives of The Dark Knight?

* Was The Reader better campaigned? * Did The Reader’s Holocaust theme automatically register with older voters?* Was there perhaps hate towards the infamously tough reputation of Christopher Nolan?

I know WALL-E is also brought up for 2008, but I think The Dark Knight was the movie that got the biggest shaft.

^All those reasons. Also, not enough voters put it as their #1 pick. While TDK probably appeared on more ballots than The Reader, the latter got more #1 votes (more passion) and thus got in at the expense of the former.

^Passion from the same group of voters that got Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (also directed by Stephen Daldry) and The Blind Side in despite bad reviews. You don’t need everyone to like your film, just a small group that LOVES it and who will put it as their favorite film of the year. A film like TDK, which many voters may have liked but not loved, did not get enough voters to put it in the #1 slot. The preferential system tends to hurt blockbusters like TDK (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 and Skyfall being two examples that could’ve got in if all votes were weighted equally since voters likely wouldn’t put them at #1 with the preferential system).

Yeah, comic book summer blockbuster sequel. Very annoying. It got into all the guilds. This was just the Acdemy’s biases showing.

I think if there had been no TDK and only Wall-E, we still would have 5 BP nominees. The Reader messed with it all – I think its egregious inclusion was the tipping point that said that there needs to be some way to counter act the Harvey Weinsteins of the world.

What I think might be equally confusing is Inception’s run. The fact that it wasn’t nominated for director is also highly annoying, but not crazy considering the tough field (but seriously? the Coen Bros? I love them but over Nolan, I don’t know). What’s really confusing is its editing snub, which just makes zero sense to me.

But we see this snobbery all the time against franchise and genre films. Even Skyfall, a non-comic book or genre film, couldn’t make it into BP just because the tite character’s name was James Bond.

[quote=”Jason_Travis”]More passion for The Reader? If there was so much passion, why is it such a hated entry? So many people balked when it was nominated. That’s the thing that confuses me.

But did Academy members balk? Apparently not. It was bloggers and critics. Sorry, but bloggers and critics don’t vote for Oscars. [/quote]

Erm apparently enough did to change the Best Picture format from 5 nominees to 10 the following year; and many say it was because of The Dark Knight’s snub. Sorry how is this suddenly a crazy theory to bring up? It’s been talked about for years.

I definitely think films like The Dark Knight and WALL-E appeared on more ballots than The Reader, but in less #1 spots. Daldry has a huge pocket of support – he’s been nomination for Best Director three times (yet only deserved the nod once for The Hours). In fact, I suspect that support for him is so present that even if The Reader missed a BP nod, he’d still be up for director.

[quote=”Tye-Grr”][quote=”Jason_Travis”]More passion for The Reader? If there was so much passion, why is it such a hated entry? So many people balked when it was nominated. That’s the thing that confuses me.

But did Academy members balk? Apparently not. It was bloggers and critics. Sorry, but bloggers and critics don’t vote for Oscars. [/quote]

Erm apparently enough did to change the Best Picture format from 5 nominees to 10 the following year; and many say it was because of The Dark Knight’s snub. Sorry how is this suddenly a crazy theory to bring up? It’s been talked about for years. [/quote]

I agree with you on this, I’m just saying that obviously enough also loved it enough so that it got that 5th slot over ‘TDK’. I agree with the theories of others that ‘TDK’ was maybe on more ballots, but with less #1 votes. More voters perhaps “liked” ‘TDK’ versus “loved it”.